Catching up with Geoff Dyer

Geoff Dyer’s new memoir, Homework, was originally called “A Happening.” There would have been something of a joke to this discarded title; from one point of view, nothing much happens in the book. There’s an indelible ordinariness to this coming-of-age story, which, with a few detours, follows Dyer’s early life until he reaches the age of eighteen, in the world of working-class Gloucestershire of the sixties and seventies. Any readers hoping for shocking revelations about the author’s childhood will not find much to titillate them. But of course from another point of view, everything happens. Dyer—has written many books, including Out of Sheer Rage, Jeff in Venice, and most recently The Last Days of Roger Federer—describes in great detail the period in which he became himself, in all the erudition, playfulness, and creativity we might already be familiar with. (Out of Sheer Rage, nominally a book about trying to write a book about D. H. Lawrence, is essential reading for any writer of nonfiction: a funny, moving account of the creative process in its frustrations and joys.) In Homework, Dyer turns his attention to his early life, down even to the accessories his Action Man figurine wore: “the plastic lace patterns on Action’s boots; the khaki elastic strap of his carbine; the little buckle on the helmet strap and the plastic niche into which it was anchored; the genetic logo embossed on his back: Made in England by Palitoy under Licence from Hasbro © 1964.”